posts tagged: family

Just in under the wire! I wasn’t going to join in on the Blogger’s Quilt Festival this time around, but when I mailed the Plus Quilt to my cousin I asked if he’d be sure to take a picture of him and his now-wife with it. I expected, I don’t know, just a cell phone shot at arm’s length. Nothing crazy. But I should have known—we are related, after all—that he’d make this something awesome.

Turns out they took it with them to the place where he proposed to her (with the tree)! It’s a park in St. Louis—he did not tell me where. How cute are they to have done that. And then they went with it on to a baseball game where the temps were nippy, and they were able to take a pic with the Arch in the background (below). How awesome is that?!

Info about the quilt is more detailed here, but it’s a really straightforward quilt. Blues and greens on their request, and cut so that I had a long bar of a plus and the two small squares, rather than all individual squares. My favorite part is probably the quilt label, which I made after being inspired by the latest chalkboard-writing craze. It was fun to design that and get it stitched up, and I was proud that I finally took the time to make a proper label. It’s that last detail and I tend to not give it the proper attention. Kind of like buttons on a cardigan or something—I just want it done already, why do I have to bother with these bits!?

Anyway, the quilt came together quickly, and as you can see it’s very large (Patrick is like 6’3″ or something). I’d definitely do another plus; it’s such a perfect motif for a wedding quilt and allows for so much variation and play with patterns. I’ll submit this to the Modern Quilt category!

When I last posted, I had just finished knitting the lace batwing top to wear to a bridal luncheon during my cousin’s wedding weekend. Knitting that flared up my carpal tunnel so badly I knew I needed to take a long break from knitting. (I didn’t exactly do this, and I knit a few more little things. That? Was a super bad idea, and the pain has reached seriously frightening levels, so now I’m completely off knitting until I can get up the nerve to call a hand specialist. It sucks.) This means that I’ve actually been spending time watching TV while doing nothing at all—unfathomable for me normally, and so so boring. But it also means that there’s been a lot more quilting, because so far that hasn’t bothered my hands very much. First up? A wedding gift quilt for the two who got married in April!

I’d asked my cousin for color preferences and she said “blues.” This necessitated a trip to some quilting shops for some stash development—how did I not have a good range of blues? Navies, khakis, greens, and purples actually matched their blue and khaki wedding colors, and it turns out they coordinate perfectly with the colors in their living room. I wanted to find a few “special” fabrics but came up empty on that front. However, the one cream with little oars was perfect for them, since they like to kayak often, and Jason donated a plaid shirt that never fit him so that he had a presence in the quilt too.

I have several different triangle rulers and opted for an isosceles one; I cut all the fabrics into triangles and tossed them into one of those big blue Ikea shopping bags, giving it a big mix regularly. Then I set up my flannel design wall and started building the rows by grabbing from the bag without getting caught up in planning the sequences. The only pieces that were immediately put back were ones identical to the one just placed. I ended up with a nice random arrangement, and just a little bit of rearranging at the end gave me a nice balance of colors, patterns, etc. Then I got to seaming!

Though it felt as if I had thousands of triangles, I’d really only cut enough to make the blanket throw sized, and once I realized this I couldn’t bear to cut any more or seam them up, so it is a modest 5-something feet by 5-something feet big. I am in awe of those who have made multiple triangle quilts. While simple in theory, it was a lot more time consuming than I’d expected it to be! I didn’t get the hang of matching my triangles for a long time, despite many attempts to systematize the process.

For the backing, I couldn’t resist my “signature” back, with a little stack of strips of the fabrics used on the front. The main fabric for the backing is Kona, not sure the exact name right now but I suspect it’s actually the color called “brown.” I embroidered their names and the date of their wedding right onto the back, rather than make a label, and I really like the effect. The binding is the same khakis used on the front (both Kona), hand-sewn down; I finally remembered to tuck my “by pepperknit” label into one corner. I quilted lines a half inch from all the seams and greatly underestimated the amount of thread I’d need to get this done; I ran out of two spools in the process! I also had some serious issues with the basting–lately I can’t seem to get my quilt sandwich to come out right on the first try. I’m not sure what is going wrong but I’m blaming the batting, because I know I’m doing a very good job taping the backing down. Should I be taping the batting too? Something is off and I really need to figure it out before I do my next quilt, because it’s not as if I didn’t rearrange my entire living room (separating our sectional sofa even) in order to have as much clear floor I could. Anyway, we’ll see if I can remedy this for my next quilt.

I gave the quilt to Meg and Josh at our annual family beach week, just like I did for her brother last year, so we did a little shoot in the backyard of our beach house on the one rainy, cold, terrible weather day. And her husband proved that it’s the perfect couch blanket for curling up with a book. (Note: That is a different cousin sitting on the couch with him.) I hope they love it and enjoy a lifetime of curling up together under it!

I did not knit a single stitch for this wedding, and it’s just as well, because the temperature was pushing 100F (37C) and the humidity had to be hovering near, oh, about eight thousand percent. Why yes, we ventured to steamy gross Georgia for a wedding at the beginning of August! This was a cousin on my dad’s side (the wedding earlier this summer was on my mom’s side), who grew up in Georgia and married a good Southern girl.

This is the summer/year of weddings! Back in July we went to the first for my family, out in Jersey. It was the Friday after the wedding weekend in Boulder, which meant two weddings in less than a week. That is too much wedding for any sane person, let me tell you! But luckily this one was closer to home, and we could take a train there. The weather was iffy so I actually knit a shrug for the first time in my life, to toss over my dress “just in case.” I’m glad I had it, too, as it was rainy and on the chilly side for early July.